


the only beat that i have left

by WakeupSoon



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Imprisonment, Self-Reflection, a lot of alone time, also i'm not as sorry about this as i should be, i'm ok i promise but she could use some help, its not wrongful necessarily but its not like... a bad crime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29001066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeupSoon/pseuds/WakeupSoon
Summary: Prequel to a homebrew D&D campaign. Charity's time in prison.
Relationships: Original D&D Character(s)/Original D&D Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6
Collections: Tales of Voskye (Dungeons and Dragons Homebrew Campaign)





	the only beat that i have left

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littleleotas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/gifts).



> Title from "Thorns" by Charlie Simpson. 
> 
> A follow on from [lord, don't let me break this](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Voskye/works/28246881) by [littleleotas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas) which is not required reading to get it but is _very_ cute where this is... decidedly not. Also a gift to her because how else do our DMs cause us pain if not with the painful gifts we give them.

You're running faster than you've ever run before, and that's saying something because you're _fast_. You're really fast.

You wish you were going faster.

It doesn’t feel like it did when you were younger, running through the grass and the fields out in the open just because you could. Not _away_ from something. 

The walls of the city are closing in. 

You’re not used to this. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

* * *

You met Rose at a time in your life when everything seemed conflicted: too young to know what you wanted, too old to just do nothing. You were wandering through trying to find… not purpose. You never thought a purpose would be the validation you needed. More just something to pass the time. 

_She’s the one who gave you purpose_ , you think to yourself as the walls close in around you, _And look what you’ve done with it now_. 

* * *

You give yourself a day to wallow in self-pity and then you do what you always do: you carry on.

There’s no free movement, no leaving the literal prison you’ve found yourself in. With high walls and actual guards and, worst of all, people following the rules… You allow yourself to think about the fact that, surely, not following the rules was what got everyone else in here too. Yet, now: people comply. At first it's a passing thought but as the days and weeks and months go by it festers. There are much much worse people inside these gates than you - you’ve spoken to them, you’re getting to know them. They behave as well. 

It’s eerily quiet some times. During the nights it makes sense, the people closest to you inside all need to sleep, properly sleep - not just trance like you do. You find yourself meditating just to pass the time. At first to the darkness, to nothing. An image of Rose, sometimes, but that upsets you more than you’ll ever say. You replay conversations. Feel her concern. Let the image of her blame you like you blame yourself. 

You never let yourself trance in the nights after those ones.

It feels like the quiet follows you around as you’re shepherded to where you’re supposed to be at any given time. No matter where you pass through it feels like there’s no background noise. Not at dinner, not in the halls. Not during the mandated “work” hours where they have you foraging with the other wood elves - because all wood elves know the forest, of course. Even though you’ve spent the last few decades in a city. You must know how to forage. (You hate that they’re _right_ and you _do_ , but still). Everything happens in silence. 

You ask a guard one day if you’re allowed to talk, “Of course, there’s no rule against noise,” they say. It feels false.

Still, you start to chatter more. Beyond the people physically closest to you - to any one you pass. Whispers into the air. Greetings. Acknowledgements. Often they’re returned in kind, but only from within a certain distance. Something prickles in the air. 

* * *

You can’t place the first time you meditate and _know_ that Cithrel is watching. Weirdly, it feels like their presence has always been there, but that it's only just now they’re allowing you to notice it. It feels wrong in the same way that it feels right: this is _her_ god. Rose’s god. You’ve never been a worshipper. Not of any god, let alone Cithrel. You’ve never prayed. You’ve never had anything to pray for.

You have the strongest urge to pray now, though - overwhelming with the way it builds in your chest, the feeling pulsating through your body and leaving it via the only way it can. You cry and you pray, the words familiar in your ears but foreign in your mouth. A grieving prayer. For souls that have passed on. 

If you believed in the gods sending messages you’d think Cithrel was trying to tell you something. 

You refuse to believe.

* * *

Nights and days carry on monotonous and boring. They keep you all mostly locked up except for mealtimes and work and a couple of hours in the courtyard each day. A place you wander into blinking through the sunlight and by the time your eyes have adjusted it always feels like it's time to go back inside. 

You spend less time trancing than ever before, holding on to the semblance of _some_ control: they can’t force you to rest. They can only force you to stay.

You meditate the rest of the time. It’s doing something to you, mentally but also, you think, physically. Some days you feel like you could break your way out with nothing but the power of your own fists and an empty path on the other side. The thing is, you’re not sure where you’d go. There are whispers of turmoil and change more than there ever have been before and you’ve been inside a long time. You’re not sure how long as you’ve been determinedly _not_ counting but it’s been a while. Enough time for the people around you to change over several times. Enough time to fade into memory for the guards who are paying less attention. 

Enough time they forget to mention you to the new ones too.

* * *

You keep to the shadows at the edge of the courtyard. It’s the only outside time you get these days - the guards have stopped coming to get you to join the workforce. It's not from a lack of ability. You assume you’ve been missed off a list somewhere and nobody realises that’s what they’re supposed to do with you. But you’re not going to point it out to them, and your current cellmate hasn’t either. Probably out of fear - fear of them or fear of you, you’re not sure. You haven’t exactly been welcoming. 

The thing is though, you just don’t have the _energy_ to be welcoming to them. They’ll be gone by the time you care about them. They always are. But you can’t even remember if you’ve tried to talk to this one at all. That thought should concern you more than it does, you realise. The way it indicates an even greater loss of morality. The way Rose never would have let you get away with being so... Rude. 

Rose. The thought of her hits you like a firebolt and you find yourself unable to breathe for a moment. You’re so good, _so good_ , at not thinking about her. At not letting yourself remember. Cithrel feels as much yours as hers now, even if it's borne from a twisted version of loyalty that’s nowhere near as pure as faith is. 

You realise with a sudden clarity that she’d hate this version of you, and you will yourself not to care about that. The thing is though, she wouldn’t hate you. She’d just be disappointed in your actions. She’d love you despite them. You resent that right now, to be honest.

* * *

It’s been raining for millennia. You’re exaggerating, but it _does_ feel like it. It’s probably only been a couple of months, not even a year. Maybe weeks, or just a day or two. Time is really fucking with your mind at the moment. 

All you know is you feel trapped. Restless. Even more so than normal. There’s been movement around the cells. People being shifted from one area to another. You’ve had so many cellmates over the last century or so that at first it’s not weird until it suddenly _is_ weird. 

You’re now surrounded only by other wood elves. 

It’s _never_ been this way and it’s unsettling. Prisoners have always been free to mingle and now suddenly it’s like you’re not anymore. You feel like you’ve missed an announcement somewhere along the line, but the truth is the shift to this has probably happened gradually and you just didn’t notice until the final stage. The cell changes. The realisation that you are surrounded only with other trancers. 

You stop trancing again to make yourself less aware of it. To make it feel less weird. 

* * *

The defiance builds in you in the same way it did before you even got thrown into prison. That desire to do _something_ to show they can’t grind your soul out of you like they want to. Something underhanded. 

You start talking, properly, to the others. You’ve spent so long skulking in the shadows most of them think you’re new and you let them keep hold of that assumption. It’s much easier than “No, I’ve been here, watching you.” 

Well, it’s less creepy than that at least. 

You realise what they’re really trying to stop is any kind of unity. The guards don’t want the prisoners working together. There’s rumours of attempted breakouts - actually there’s rumours of _successful_ ones too - but they all have an air of myth and legend to them that makes you not quite believe them. 

You used to be good at the unity thing. At getting people to work together. An escape seems risky but the thought does occur that you don’t need to be unified to leave to show you can work together. 

And there’s no _rule_ about trying to put on a play for the other prisoners. 

* * *

_There probably is a rule, now,_ you think, as your face slams against a brick wall. You’ve never been to this part of the prison before. It feels damp, somewhere deep beneath the surface - moss growing on the walls and you definitely heard the scatter of tiny rodent feet as you were marched in. 

Your costume dangles over your arm and you do momentarily consider that maybe using a guards uniform as part of the show is what tipped them over the edge. It's one of the few things you managed to grab as they took you, though - there was no pit stop at your cell en route. You can only thank Cithrel that you still even have your locket. You’d nearly left it in there this morning, only the soft whisper of a _don’t_ in the air told you not to. 

You slide down the wall, slime already gripping to your hair, truly alone for the first time ever in your life - not just hiding from everyone else. 

_We didn’t even get to the play part_ , you think, as you close your eyes to trance.


End file.
